Posts from the “stuff everyone should read” Category

As you’re no doubt aware, Mumsnet launched their rape awareness campaign yesterday – We Believe You I’ll be blogging more on the campaign later, but I just wanted to highlight one of the Twitter hashtags that has already come out as a result of the Mumsnet launch -#ididnotreport. This hashtag came about because so many of those who responded to the Mumsnet survey on rape and sexual assault revealed that they did not report the crimes perpetrated against them. In fact I think the percentage of those who didn’t report pretty much tallies with what we already know about the reporting of rape and sexual violence – something like 40% of adult women who are raped never tell anyone about it, and 31% of…

I was one of those who contributed to the New Statesman piece last week about the abuse women writers and bloggers are subjected to online, and I’m really pleased to see how that piece and others have helped kick start a wider debate on the subject. Unfortunately though, this isn’t the first time this debate has been had: and that’s because rape threats and other threats of violence towards women who write online are not new phenomena. Many of you will have been around long enough to remember the attacks on Kathy Sierra for instance, as well as being fully aware of some of the concerted campaigns against radical feminist bloggers, including Julie Bindel who for some inexplicable reason has been completely ignored in…

The Guardian’s Readers’ Editor Chris Elliott (no relation) has a piece up today where he attempts to ‘clarify’ the statistics on rape convictions – Open door: The fair use of facts on rape, which, from my reading of it, doesn’t really clarify anything. Take this bit for instance about the 6.5% conviction rate figure : “The reader said: “This is wrong on both counts. About 13% of reported rapes result in a conviction, not 6.5%, and you have in fact pointed out this mistake several times in your Corrections and clarifications column.” Indeed that’s true says Elliott, the Guardian has corrected that figure in the past, but, he goes on to say: “it is a little more complicated than that, as some work by…

I feel like I should offer up some kind of apology for the lack of posts on here recently, but I know that people who read this blog are a pretty forgiving bunch, so I won’t. I’ve not even got any excuse for the silence to be honest, I just haven’t felt like writing anything; or at least, I haven’t felt inspired to write anything (well, nothing that couldn’t be covered by 140 characters in a tweet anyway), and as I’ve said before, I’m really not into writing just for the sake of it, so I try not to. But lots of other people have been writing, and lots of things have been going on in the world, so I thought I’d do one…

An interesting document has just been published on the UK Parliament website: Uncorrected transcript of oral evidence on the policing of the TUC march on 26th March 2011 Now UK Uncut and others have already accused the police of politically motivated arrests, but up until now it’s a charge the police have been keen to deny. Reading through that transcript though, it’s pretty clear that there were other motivations behind the arrests at Fortnum and Mason beyond simply clamping down on any ‘criminal activity.’ Here’s Lynne Owens, QPM MA, Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police, giving her evidence as to what took place on the day: “We did do, contrary to all the commentary, a fairly significant amount of pre-event work on known groups of people,…

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"Those of us who love reading and writing believe that being a writer is a sacred trust. It means telling the truth. It means being incorruptible. It means not being afraid, and never lying."
Andrea Dworkin

"Sex-negative feminism consists of, what, Andrea Dworkin and that weird Cath Elliott woman at the Guardian?"
Someone on the Internet